Wallpaper Engine

Currently Windows Only

Hi, there this project lets you set a kivy Window as your wallpaper. What does that mean ?

Anything you can make in Kivy can be set as you wallpaper (given it does not require user input)

A few of the current available wallpapers

---

Installation

only tested on CPython

installing Wallpaper Engine is very easy

First install Poetry (it's an awesome package manager for python)

clone this repo and cd into dir

git clone "https://github.com/p0lygun/wallpaper-engine.git" && cd wallpaper-engine

Install required packages using poetry

poetry install  

RUN !!!

poetry run python wallpaper_engine    

That's it. The wallpaper-engine is now installed, you should see a window like this

To choose a wallpaper click on Show settings and choose a wallpaper

The wallpaper is updated when you click on Change/Reload wallpaper in the main menu (You need to press this button when u start the program or change the wallpaper)

Each wallpaper comes with its onw settings, to change the go to the wallpaper settings section in settings

settings are updated as soon as you enter the value and close the pop-up

---

Making you own wallpaper

if you want to make you own wallpaper its very easy

but first you should make familiar with the directory structure

D:.
  \---wallpaper_engine  # main app folder
      |
      +---data          # runtime data is stored here
      |
      +---libs          # contains main libs (kivy manager, menu ...)
      |   +---kv        # kv lang files for each lib
      |
      +---utils         # contaings things that are used by both menu and kivy manager
      |
      +---wallpapers    # contains all the wallpapers and there configs, and kv lang files
      |   +---configs
      |   +---kv

so to make a new wallpaper make a new file in wallpaper directory (the file name must follow snake case i.e snake_case)

then in wallpapers\kv make a kv file with name snakecase.kv

so If your wallpaper name is my_wallpaper.py its kv file name will be mywallpaper.kv

Ok now lets make a Wallpaper

I will use starfield and starfeild.kv as an example

Now any wallpaper has a Wallpaper Class that inherits from WallpaperBase So this is the main class for any wallpaper and only this will be called by kivy_manager

Each kivy file also must contain the following kv code

<Wallpaper>:
    size_hint : (1,1)
    canvas.before:
        Color:
            rgba: self.background_color
        Rectangle:
            pos: (0,0)
            size: self.size
    FloatLayout:
        size_hint : (1,1)
        id : container

now each Wallpaper class gets two function from WallpaperBase that one must override
build & animate.

build is the function where you should add widgets to your class (In the floatlayout which has id:container)

animate is the function where all the animation will happen this function is called only once

So you shuld handle the animation in your wallpaper using Animation or using Clock.schedule_interval or Clock.schedule_once or a combination of all three

If you use Clock.schedule_interval as your main animation driver set the self.animation_loop_clock to the schedule_interval
Example point_walk.py#L199 and set self.playing = True

No matter how you handle the animation try to implement (or override) function for play and pause so that the kivy_manager can pause your wallpaper when your desktop is not in focus

Making wallpaper config and Settings

You need to do this only if you want to save settings to disk

To make a config for your wallpaper define the __init__ as defined

the Config object takes two optional args local and module

local means that this a personal config not a gloabal one module take the file name as the value (pathlib.Path(__file__).stem)

To make a settings panel we use the same format as kivy settings you just need to make a Json

here is an example

settings_json = [
    {"type": "title", "title": "Star Field wallpaper Settings"},
    {
        "type": "string",
        "title": "Star Color",
        "desc": "Color of the stars (Hex)",
        "section": "wallpaper",
        "key": "star_color",
    },
    {
        "type": "string",
        "title": "Background Color",
        "desc": "Background Color (Hex)",
        "section": "wallpaper",
        "key": "background_color",
    },
]

each dict in the list must have section wallpaper and the keys must be class variables that you want to save to disk

if there is a interger in the variables use is_int to mark that variable as an integer

Then at last call self.load_settings with the settings_json as the first argument

now you have settings and save to disk done !!!

I know all this can be tough to understand at first so you can DM me anytime on Discord or join Kivy discord server